Updated 10.44pm - HSBC updates statement

Payments firm Visa suffered a widespread systems outage on Friday, with many users across the continent saying their card payments were not being accepted in shops. 

The company confirmed that it was suffering a disruption that was preventing some payments from being processed.

"We are investigating the cause and working as quickly as possible to resolve the situation," the company said. 

Processing problems are believed to be intermittent, with some payments going through and others being declined. 

The problem appears to have affected much of the payment processor's European network, with users in the UK, Spain, Belgium and Austria among those tweeting about payments being blocked.

A spokesman for HSBC Malta told Times of Malta that it was aware of the industry-wide outage but that all local transactions and ATM withdrawals using their cards were unaffected by the disruption. 

"Clients using their Visa [card] whilst abroad may still be affected," a bank spokesman cautioned. 

Bank of Valletta was unable to provide a statement about the issue.

Visa is one of the world's largest payment processing systems, with the company boasting of handling an average of 150 million transactions every day across the globe. When fully functional, its systems are capable of handling more than 24,000 transactions per second.